THE UNSUSTAINABLE LIGHTNESS OF MAKING - part 1: YONA FRIEDMAN (sneak peek)

THE UNSUSTAINABLE LIGHTNESS OF MAKING - part 1: YONA FRIEDMAN (sneak peek)
by Cesare Griffa
November 2017

On the 30th of November 2017, I traveled to Paris to kick off the project “The unsustainable lightness of making” with an amazing conversation with Yona Friedman, the architect, the utopist, the artist, the man that is a beacon in the storm for the many interested in human creativity, nature and the future of our bio-sphere.

This super-short video is a sneak peek of that very special day, and of a longer video that will be released soon.
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THE UNSUSTAINABLE LIGHTNESS OF MAKING - Synopsis
The oldest flint tools made by our ancestors the Australopithecus are dated 3 millions years, and are the very first attempt of early humans to modify and dominate nature. A primitive design activity, and a quite bad beginning. These people were among the very few creatures around without fangs and claws. Difficult time for them in the wild. But they did have brains, and began to use them to gather together and build artificial fangs and claws. No alternatives for survival were available. The extreme consequences of that approach bring to what we know today as climate change.
By considering design as the activity of the human making, we assume that it’s the core of the relationship between the man (the artificial) and the environment (the natural). We usually consider the consequences of that relationship as sustainability issues, and it’s a complicated affair. Sustainability is a horrible word. Outside the environmental discourse, we use it to describe couples at the ends of their love that keep staying together for convenience, or things like that. Since we choose it, we might consider the fact that we are talking about the crisis of the love affair between humanity and its planet. Between the artificial and the natural.
Saving the planet might be an epic love adventure in which the natural seduces the artificial. It’s a travel from the past to the future, discovering the unknown. It’s one of the more profound acts of love through the design of possible amazing scenarios. In a series of interviews with amazing people, this project surfs into some sparkles of these future love scenarios in which artificial and natural merge together.